Wendell Achterberg Head Custodian Duluth, 55805, United States [email protected] · (218) 555-0142
11 September 2026
Mr. Darnell Prokop Buildings and Grounds Cloquet Public Schools Cloquet, United States
Application for Head Custodian, Riverside High School
Dear Mr. Prokop,
I am applying for the Head Custodian post at Riverside High School. I am currently head custodian of a 214,000 square foot high school in Duluth serving 1,450 students, leading a crew of nine across three shifts, and I hold a Minnesota Special Boiler Engineer license and a current background check.
The work I am most likely to be useful for at Riverside is the floor care program and the summer. At Lakeshore I put the building on a three-year strip and refinish cycle across 46,000 square feet of tile, with scrub and recoat in between and weekly corridor burnishing, which cut our floor chemical spend by 31% in the first full year and held the public areas at APPA appearance level 2 through four district inspections. I also rebuilt the summer schedule into a room-by-room sign-off sheet, so all 68 classrooms, the gymnasium and the auditorium are ready before the first staff day rather than the first student day.
I saw that Riverside has the district's only pool and that the building took on the community education program last year, which I take to mean heavy evening and weekend use. I have run a building with that pattern and I am comfortable with the event load and with the snow call-out, which I have taken every winter since 2013.
My boiler license runs to 2028, my background check and mandated reporter training are current, and I can give four weeks' notice. Thank you for considering this.
Sincerely, Wendell Achterberg
Summary
A custodian cover letter tells a school or municipal facilities director how big a building you have run, on what shift, and what licenses and clearances you already hold. This guide gives you a full adaptable letter, how the letter changes between a district, a city and a college, and how to write it with a thin work history.
Custodian cover letter examples by experience level
A custodian cover letter is a one-page letter about a building you were trusted with.
The reader is usually a facilities director or a principal, working through classified applications in the weeks before school starts. They have a building, a shift to fill, and a list of things that go wrong when the wrong person holds the keys. The letter's job is to make the match obvious in three lines.
Guide to a custodian cover letter
This guide and the corresponding custodian cover letter example will cover:
- How to structure the letter, paragraph by paragraph
- Why the building's square footage belongs in the opening
- What counts as evidence when nobody scored your work
- How the letter changes for a district, a city and a college
- How to write it with a thin work history or a record to explain
How to write a custodian cover letter
| Paragraph | Its job | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | The post, the building you run now, its size and your shift | 2 to 3 sentences |
| Evidence | One thing you did to a building, with a number and a period | 4 to 5 sentences |
| Fit | Something real about their site, and what you would take on | 3 to 4 sentences |
| Close | Licenses, clearance, availability, thank you | 2 sentences |
Open with the plant, not with yourself
A facilities director is matching people to buildings, so the sentence after the post should be the building: "I am currently head custodian of a 214,000 square foot high school with 1,450 students, leading a crew of nine across three shifts." That answers scale, level and staffing at once, and almost no letter in the stack has it.
Follow it with the two things that decide whether you can start on time: your license, if your state licenses boiler operators, and whether your background check is current. A candidate who is already cleared is worth weeks to a district in August.
A custodian cover letter example you can adapt
Dear Mr. Prokop,
I am applying for the Head Custodian post at Riverside High School. I am currently head custodian of a 214,000 square foot high school in Duluth serving 1,450 students, leading a crew of nine across three shifts, and I hold a Minnesota Special Boiler Engineer license and a current background check.
The work I am most likely to be useful for at Riverside is the floor care program and the summer. At Lakeshore I put the building on a three-year strip and refinish cycle across 46,000 square feet of tile, with scrub and recoat in between and weekly corridor burnishing, which cut our floor chemical spend by 31% in the first full year and held the public areas at APPA appearance level 2 through four district inspections. I also rebuilt the summer schedule into a room-by-room sign-off sheet, so all 68 classrooms, the gymnasium and the auditorium are ready before the first staff day rather than the first student day.
I saw that Riverside has the district's only pool and that the building took on the community education program last year, which I take to mean heavy evening and weekend use. I have run a building with that pattern and I am comfortable with the event load and with the snow call-out, which I have taken every winter since 2013.
My boiler license runs to 2028, my background check and mandated reporter training are current, and I can give four weeks' notice. Thank you for considering this.
Sincerely, Wendell Achterberg
Openings that work, and what counts as evidence
| Instead of | Use |
|---|---|
| I am a hard worker who takes pride in a clean building | I am currently head custodian of a 214,000 square foot high school with 1,450 students |
| I am writing to apply for your custodial opening | I am applying for the Head Custodian post at Riverside High School |
| I have experience with floors and general maintenance | I put the building on a three-year strip and refinish cycle across 46,000 square feet of tile |
| I am reliable and available | My boiler license runs to 2028 and my background check is current |
Most custodians are never given a score, so use what the building can show instead.
| Kind of evidence | What it looks like in a sentence |
|---|---|
| Scale | A 214,000 square foot building with 1,450 students and a crew of nine |
| Program | Three-year strip and refinish cycle across 46,000 square feet of tile |
| Standard | Held APPA appearance level 2 through four district inspections |
| Money | Cut floor chemical spend 31% by moving to dilution-control dispensing |
| Schedule | 68 classrooms signed off room by room before the first staff day |
| Systems | Daily boiler pressure, temperature and water treatment log under license |
School, municipal and college: three different readers
A school district is hiring for the calendar. Lead with the building, the shift and your clearance, then show the summer, because what you get done between June and August is the part of the year a principal worries about.
A city or county is hiring for the schedule and the public. Municipal buildings mean courthouses, libraries, recreation centers and depots, often with public access all day. Lead with shift coverage, multi-site work, a driving license, and experience of cleaning around the public rather than after them.
A college or university is hiring for the standard. Campuses use APPA language directly, run residence halls with a summer turnover as intense as a hotel's, and expect written work order systems. Lead with the standard you held and the systems you used.
Put the square footage of your current building in the first two lines. Name the shift you are applying for. Say whether your background check is current, because it saves the district weeks. Name your state boiler or equipment license with its class and expiry. Mention one real thing about their site, taken from their own pages. Offer the snow rota and summer work if you can take them.
Do not describe a student, a staff member or anything you found in a classroom. Do not write "general cleaning and maintenance duties", which tells a director nothing they can grade. Do not hide a lapsed license; say when it lapsed and whether you are renewing. Do not send the same letter to a school and a city depot. Do not leave out the shift, since that is the first thing being staffed.
Writing it with a thin work history or a record to explain
Custodial work is a genuine entry point, and districts know that. A short history is not a problem; a vague one is.
If you have not held a formal job, write what you have done and give it shape: caretaking for a church or mosque, seasonal grounds, warehouse or kitchen work, barracks duty, minding a building for a landlord, running a family business. Name the site, the hours, how long, and what you were trusted with, such as keys, opening, closing or an alarm code. Two honest paragraphs about a small site beat a page of adjectives about nothing.
If your record is from another country, size the building in square feet or in classrooms and use the American job title for what you did. If English is your second language, write short sentences and say what you speak, because bilingual staff are useful in almost every district. A gap gets one plain line: a layoff, an illness, caring for a parent, a move.
A criminal record deserves a straight answer rather than a comforting one. Schools run fingerprint-based background checks on non-teaching staff and on contractors with direct student contact; Texas requires it of non-certified staff hired on or after 1 January 2008 (Texas Education Agency, fingerprinting and registry in schools). What disqualifies you differs by state and by offence. Find out what your state's check will show before you apply, never leave an application question blank, and know that commercial, industrial and some municipal employers apply different rules.
Where the better-paid custodial jobs actually are
The Occupational Outlook Handbook puts janitors and building cleaners at 2,432,600 jobs in 2025, growing 2 percent to 2035, with about 321,800 openings a year and a median wage of $36,840, or $17.71 an hour (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 wages, 2025-35 projections).
The industry split is the useful part. Services to buildings and dwellings, the contract cleaning industry, holds the largest share at 35 percent and pays a median of $17.21 an hour, while educational services holds 17 percent at $18.63 and government excluding education and hospitals holds 5 percent at $20.76 (same source).
That is roughly $7,400 a year between the contract median and the government median on a full-time schedule, and it is the practical reason to write about a building, a license and a floor care program rather than about cleaning.
Length, format and sending it
One page, four paragraphs, 250 to 350 words. PDF unless the portal specifies otherwise, named for yourself and the post.
Address a person. Facilities directors, buildings and grounds supervisors and principals are listed on district websites, and a named greeting reads as a real application rather than a batch. Use the same numbers as your resume. Our custodian resume example uses the same building, cycle and license, so the two agree.
Key takeaways
- Open with the building: square footage, population and your shift.
- Give one program you owned, with a number and a period of time.
- Say whether your background check and licenses are current.
- Name the APPA appearance level if your employer used it.
- Mention one true thing about their site from their own pages.
- Offer the snow rota and summer work if you can take them.
- Address a named person and keep it to one page.
Write your custodian cover letter in 10 minutes.
Custodian cover letter questions, answered
How long should a custodian cover letter be?
One page, four paragraphs, 250 to 350 words. Directors read these in batches in July and August, and the letter that reaches the building size in two lines is the one read to the end.
Do I need a cover letter if the district uses an application portal?
Attach one wherever there is a field. The portal collects the same boxes from everyone. The letter is the only place you can say how big your building was, what you did to its floors, and that your clearance is current.
What do I write if I have never worked in a school?
Write the building you have looked after, whatever it was: a church, a warehouse, an apartment block, a depot, a barracks. Give the size, the hours and what you were trusted with. Then answer the three things a district must establish anyway: shifts, driving license, background check.
Should I mention my boiler license in the letter?
Yes, in the first or last paragraph, with the class and the expiry. In states that license boiler operators a district cannot put an unlicensed person in charge of a licensed plant, so the license is not a nice extra; it decides which posts you are eligible for at all.
How do I explain leaving a job after a short time?
One clean sentence, without blame: the contract ended, the site closed, the shift changed, a family member needed care. Facilities hiring sees short stays constantly, especially where buildings change contractors. What raises a flag is a short stay with nothing said about it.